ʿĀʾishah, may Allah be pleased with her, said:

I said, “O Messenger of Allah, tell me: if you came down into a valley containing a tree from which something had been eaten, and you found trees from which nothing had been eaten, from which of them would you let your camel graze?” He said … and then mentioned it. That is, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ did not marry any virgin besides her.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: “Sulaymān is Ibn Bilāl, and Abū Nuʿaym also recorded it in al-Mustakhraj.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr said in al-Bidāyah (3/130):

“Al-Bukhārī alone recorded it.”

I say: That is, to the exclusion of Muslim. Thus, the statement of the literary scholar Aḥmad ʿUbayd, may Allah have mercy on him, in his notes on Ibn al-Qayyim’s Rawḍat al-Muḥibbīn (p. 242):

“Al-Muḥibb al-Ṭabarī said in Manāqib Ummahāt al-Muʾminīn: ‘Muslim and Abū Ḥātim recorded it.’”

I say: This is an error on his part, or on the part of al-Muḥibb. Perhaps he intended to say “al-Bukhārī,” but said “Muslim.” For al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī, in Tuḥfat al-Ashrāf (12/155), attributed it only to al-Bukhārī.

I have found a corroborating narration for Sulaymān ibn Bilāl, but it is very weak: it is that of ʿImrān ibn Abī al-Faḍl, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, through the same chain from her. She said:

“O Messenger of Allah, tell me: if you came down into a valley whose trees had all been stripped bare except for one tree, where would you stay?” He said, “At the tree that had not been stripped bare.” She said, “I am that tree.”

Ibn ʿAdī recorded it in al-Kāmil (5/95), in the biographical entry on this ʿImrān, through Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh’s narration from him. He said of him: